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Columbus Plans to Overhaul 4 Schools: Poor Progress on State Tests Behind District's Latest Action

Posted on: Friday, 10 March 2006, 12:00 CST

By Jennifer Smith Richards, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Mar. 10--There's no more time to hope for a turnaround.

So at a handful of its worst schools, the ones that have been too bad for too long, Columbus Public Schools will force change.

The staff will be let go. In all but one school, a new principal will take over.

Four schools will be overhauled this summer and will begin anew next school year with a different focus and a mostly new staff. Students at the schools, Deshler and Easthaven elementaries and Champion and Indianola middle schools, consistently have failed in math and reading.

It doesn't matter how well students in those schools did on the state tests they took this week. Success would be too little, too late.

"They simply need to begin to operate differently," district Deputy Superintendent Marvenia Bosley said.

Bosley said staffs at the schools saw the overhaul announcement coming because they knew the schools were bad. Teachers have been told that everyone would be let go, but if they wanted to stay, they could ask for an interview.

"They feel like it's a punch in the stomach. A lot of them won't interview to return to the schools," said Rhonda Johnson, president of the teachers union. "They're really hurt by it."

Five schools, Brentnell, East Linden and Livingston elementaries and Linmoor and Mifflin middle schools, were overhauled for the current school year.

Other schools should brace themselves: A greater number likely will be overhauled in coming years, Bosley said.

Instead of waiting until the schools have failed for five or six consecutive years before making significant changes, the district likely will take aim at schools that have failed on tests for three years straight. About two dozen Columbus schools fall into that category now.

No Child Left Behind, the sweeping federal school-reform law that introduced sanctions for perennially failing schools, doesn't call for districts to overhaul schools quite so early.

Under the law, only schools that can't improve in math and reading after six straight years must close, then reopen as something different, even as a charter school.

Columbus, which has more schools in danger of overhaul than any other Ohio district, hopes to be more proactive than the law requires, Bosley said.

"Five years (of failure) is probably too late to think you can reconstitute a school and make a difference," she said. "There will probably be more being redesigned than there have been before."

The teachers union cringes at the idea.

"That doesn't make any sense to me. What kind of craziness is that?" asked Johnson, president of the Columbus Education Association.

Here's the problem, Johnson said: Columbus' failing schools are less desirable workplaces. They're "hard to staff."

"And when you reconstitute hard-to-staff schools, you haven't done anything because the staff changes anyway," she said. "Teachers are not breaking down the door to teach at Champion Middle School."

Bosley disagrees.

"In the schools we have redesigned, it's almost as if there's this synergy, an energy occurring between the teachers, building and parents," Bosley said.

The district has high hopes, then, for the schools it is overhauling this summer. All but Indianola Middle will get a new principal. Indianola also will become a math, science and technology school.

Two of the schools, Easthaven and Champion, will get special teacher-training programs. Educators there will receive constant training on the best teaching methods and on using student data. The district will reward teachers who raise student achievement significantly with a $2,000 bonus.

Champion also will add a "global technology" focus in 2007 as part of its overhaul plan, Bosley said.

Staff members at the schools being overhauled get first crack at the new positions and can interview for their old jobs beginning this month. Those who aren't chosen to return, and few are, can apply for other openings within the district. Interviews will open to nonreturning teachers this spring.

jsmithrichards@dispatch.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

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Source: The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

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